Early Work
As you look through the pictures feel free to click on any to see a larger version of them. Many of the pictures have information written below so you can get a feel for how a particular piece was conceived and made in to reality.
1. Tree Becoming (1993 Opus. 1)
An Egyptian Myth. The baboon, as a familiar of the god Thoth (sitting in
the boat of the Nile) restoring the Udjat (the eye of the god Horus) to the
moon goddess.
A cry for freedom. This painting draws on symbols of gay liberation,
Judaism, the oppression of minority groups, and the threat of nazism
and fundamentalism.
There is a sense of the beyond in this painting, the numinous, the eternal triangle symbolised by Oedipus returning to confront us again and again in
a new kind of birth.
The tree as potent symbol for death and rebirth.
This is the tree of the child. Partly fun and a play on words (as expressed in the title) it is also a tree of sadness. It bears fruits that bleed. It expresses the image of the sacred mushroom which has hallucinogenic properties and also the devastation of the mushroom cloud of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.
A passage taken from the Egyptian papyrus of the VIth Dynasty and the rise
of the Theban kingdom. The inscription in hieroglyphics reads “He made for
them magic for a weapon for resisting the power of (Evil) happenings (and) the dream of the night as well as of the day”.
A green man figure.
9. “The Dove Descending Breaks the air….”
An amulet and incantation in esoteric symbols weaving together a spell.
Based on the doctrine of the assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mary body and soul, at her death.
This painting is framed by a tree which holds within it a clash of multi-
(the god Shiva as creator and destroyer), Christianity/Judaism (the Virgin Mary confronted by the god Pan and the Devil), Islam (the depiction of the ascension of the prophet Muhammed into heaven) and also expresses the integrative power of sexual, bodily and spiritual aspects to form the whole.
A powerful image which came to me in a dream.
Asrael is the angel of death in Islam who carries away the souls of the dead.
The height of summer. The zenith of life expressed in this tree.
A monolithic image conjured from the Book of Revelation on a “Woman standing in the sun with the stars at her feet”. Many think of this apocalyptic vision as a reference to the Virgin Mary. I wanted to express something of earth, water, breasts, penis, womb, fertility.
To commemorate the massacre of Muslims by a Jewish fundamentalist at a mosque in Hebron in February 1994.
The painting combines three monolithic images of body/earth/stone and also African/Egyptian/sexual and mythological themes.
Several symbols are depicted within the alchemical flask, of fish, bird, man, expressing the psychic opposites of a birth coming to fruition and held by the world thread.
A late summer/autumn tree with the fall of a leaf, a dying sun, the drawing to a close of the harvest of the fruits of the earth.
Images of the tree symbolising mystical and life-
The figures like the tree itself are creating a trance dance, an elevated state of consciousness whereby the person communicates with the spiritual world. In some cultures, ritual trance dances call on the gods to bring
well-
The painting was commissioned by the Heartlands NHS Trust at Birmingham East Hospital for their AIDS unit for World AIDS Day in 1994.
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
(Pablo Picasso)
2. Restoring the Udjat to Aah
3. Libera Me
4. Return of Oedipus
5. Tree of Life (1)
6. The Bleeding Jesus Tree
7. Incantation
8. Treeman
10. The World Thread or Mercury Rising
11. Assumption
12. Behold the Man
13. Asrael
14. Tree of Life (2)
15. A Great Portent
16. Hebron ‘94
17. Immaculate Conception
18. An Alchemy – Birth
19. Harvest
20. Tree Dancing Trance